The shopping mall is both the most visible and the most
contentious symbol of American prosperity. Despite their
convenience, malls are routinely criticized for representing much
that is wrong in America--sprawl, conspicuous consumption, the loss
of regional character, and the decline of Mom and Pop stores. So
ubiquitous are malls that most people would be suprised to learn
that they are the brainchild of a single person, architect Victor
Gruen.An immigrant from Austria who fled the Nazis in 1938, Gruen
based his idea for the mall on an idealized America: the dream of
concentrated shops that would benefit the businessperson as well as
the consumer and that would foster a sense of shared community.
Modernist Philip Johnson applauded Gruen for creating a true civic
art and architecture that enriched Americans' daily lives, and for
decades he received praise from luminaries such as Lewis Mumford,
Winthrop Rockefeller, and Lady Bird Johnson. Yet, in the end, Gruen
returned to Europe, thoroughly disillusioned with his American
dream.In "Mall Maker," the first biography of this visionary
spirit, M. Jeffrey Hardwick relates Gruen's successes and
failures--his work at the 1939 World's Fair, his makeover of New
York's Fifth Avenue boutiques, his rejected plans for reworking
entire communities, such as Fort Worth, Texas, and his crowning
achievement, the enclosed shopping mall. Throughout Hardwick
illuminates the dramatic shifts in American culture during the
mid-twentieth century, notably the rise of suburbia and
automobiles, the death of downtown, and the effect these changes
had on American life. Gruen championed the redesign of suburbs and
cities through giant shopping malls, earnestly believing that he
was promoting an American ideal, the ability to build a community.
Yet, as malls began covering the landscape and downtowns became
more depressed, Gruen became painfully aware that his dream of
overcoming social problems through architecture and commerce was
slipping away. By the tumultuous year of 1968, it had
disappeared.Victor Gruen made America depend upon its shopping
malls. While they did not provide an invigorated sense of community
as he had hoped, they are enduring monuments to the lure of
consumer culture.
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